SECOND UPDATE The BBC has celebrated the lifting of election fair reporting restrictions by giving us a full morning of broadcasting that genuinely is 85% Tory. I find this astonishing. Following the Tory commentariat conversation that opened the show (see below), Andrew Neil has now done long individual interviews with three Tory MPs in a row – the Chair of the 1922 Committee, Anna Soubry and the smarmy Dominic Raab.

ORIGINAL POST

The BBC is institutionally incapable of reacting to the shift in the political spectrum revealed by the last election.

Astonishingly on Marr the papers are being reviewed by Toby Young (far right), George Osborne (right) and Polly Toynbee (Blairite right ). The old politico/commentariat bubble is entirely intact as far as the BBC is concerned. We are going to have Michael Fallon in a minute.

Finally, Jeremy Corbyn will be invited on. He is the one person who articulates what half the country believes, and whose existence the BBC cannot entirely ignore. But the straining and stressing as the BBC try to heave the Overton window back into place is palpable.

UPDATE

Wow the BBC is really going for broke now with The Daily Politics and a review of events between “independent” commentators Andrew Neil (Tory) Julia Hartley Brewer (Tory) Tom Newton Dunn (Tory, Political Editor of Murdoch’s Sun) and Steve Richards (Blairite). Followed by an interview with a member of the Tory 1922 Committee. Followed by another Tory MP!

The Guardian/Observer on the other hand might be struggling to come up with some sort of readjustment towards the views of its readership and away from the worst of the truly obnoxious overpaid right-wingers who dominate the paper. They are, in their Sunday guise of the Observer, carrying another barking mad article from Nick Cohen attacking Jeremy Corbyn. Cohen of course to this day maintains the Iraq War was a good thing and is horrified anybody should prosper who does not agree with him. But, given the extraordinary amounts of money they pay him for these witterings, they are peculiarly hiding it. Their star columnist’s new column today appears nowhere at all on their massive website front page. It did fleetingly, but has been well and truly buried.

(I do realise you can’t read that. I just posted it to show I had looked through the entire thing).

257 thoughts on “BBC Desperately Tries to Re-Assert Old Political Spectrum”

Trump may or may not defer his visit to the UK, but even he now has a greater incentive to fast-track discussions on a UK-US trade deal. I saw someone suggest that the quickest way to do this would be to include the UK into NAFTA. Something in that direction is inevitable for the two natural English-speaking allies sharing broadly similar cultures.

Remoaners thinking gloom and doom will be surprised to see life moving forwards rather than backwards. I believe Scottish ‘unionists’ think similarly.

Change brings some turbulence and that could explain some of Trump’s woes. We shall see–this is just the beginning. In the meantime, Trump has told Abbas to get his act together and embrace Egypt and Jordan’s commitment to NO terror.

‘Change brings some turbulence’. Yes indeed. Especially when you are the Tory cabinet at 10,000 feet in an underpowered Hastings. They’ll need those backward-facing seats. Meanwhile the country has no option other than to hope for some sort of safe landing. For us, if not for them.

You could not make it up, Gopve, a man who has disrupted the education of millions of young people with his moral laden, second hand, discredited academy system, the man who wanted to abolish environmental education in schools, has become minister for the environment.
Ms Truss, by the thrust of two PM’s has been jolted into another completely new portfolio in her education through the House of Commons portfolio journey. From a useless environment secretary to the justice ministry where she rankled with judges for daring to judge the limp Brexit effort. Now she’s in charge of the treasury when the chancellor is on holiday……

Academies are a natural consequence of the return to a flow model of employment; there’s no need to educate working class people beyond the basics because we don’t need A levels and degrees for permanent mass unemployment, underemployment, shorter life spans and menial labour.

No CFoI paid trips to Israel declared but he was paid + £3k to go to Washington to speak to AIPAC in March this year and was also paid by the Henry Jackson Society to have ‘Meetings with Administration, Congressional and NGO officials in role as HJS Trustee’ at the same time.

In 2009 the United Jewish Appeal in Toronto paid him an honorarium of £12,260 (why?) and £3,164 for ‘Purpose of visit: to speak at four events organized by the UJA (see Category 2 above) and hold private meetings..’

£2k plus from Lord Rothermere for two days in France with his lovely wife NOT (Sarah Vine, who scribbles for the Heil).

The Henry Jackson Society’s name crops up a lot as he is a trustee of the extreme right wing outfit as does the American Enterprise Society to whom he speaks annually in the US. Many £thousands received again.

Remember too his wrecking of the state education system under Cameron – now academies and free schools and then as Justice Secretary when he used to dress up as Lord Chancellor. Our prisons are a disgrace for a supposedly civilised country.

‘We have no hope of understanding what is coming until we understand how the dark money network operates. The remarkable story of a British member of parliament provides a unique insight into this network, on both sides of the Atlantic. His name is Liam Fox. Six years ago, his political career seemed to be over when he resigned as defence secretary after being caught mixing his private and official interests. But today he is back on the front bench, and with a crucial portfolio: secretary of state for international trade.

In 1997, the year the Conservatives lost office to Tony Blair, Fox, who is on the hard right of the Conservative party, founded an organisation called The Atlantic Bridge. Its patron was Margaret Thatcher. On its advisory council sat future cabinet ministers Michael Gove, George Osborne, William Hague and Chris Grayling. Fox, a leading campaigner for Brexit, described the mission of Atlantic Bridge as “to bring people together who have common interests”. It would defend these interests from “European integrationists who would like to pull Britain away from its relationship with the United States”.’https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit

I can’t remember Gould’s name cropping up in the UK media when the NHS was hacked. 😉

‘Biography

In his previous role as British ambassador to Israel, he set up the UK Israel tech hub, which laid the foundations for the UK and Israel’s powerful tech relationship. He also led the Cabinet Office’s cyber security unit as its Director of Cyber Security and Information Assurance, focussed on keeping Britain safe from cyber attack.

Matthew’s previous roles also include serving as principal private secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as private secretary for foreign affairs in the Prime Minister’s office.

Matthew has worked in Tehran, Islamabad, Washington and Manila. This international expertise will help the Government deliver its ambitions to help UK digital businesses expand across the world.

Horizon last night.
‘Cyber Attack – The Day the NHS Stopped
Horizon, 2017
A few weeks ago, the National Health Service was hit by a widespread and devastating cyber attack – Horizon tells the inside story of one of the most challenging days in the history of the NHS.

On the morning of 12 May the attack started. Appointment systems, pathology labs, x-rays and even CT scanners were infected – putting not just data but patients lives at risk, and on every screen a simple – some may even say polite – message appeared. ‘Ooops, your files have been encrypted!’

But what followed was far from civilised. It was very clear that all the data on an infected machine was now scrambled and only the hackers could unscramble it. For a price – and with an extra twist – after a few days the ransom money doubled, and if nothing was paid within a week, the hackers threatened to destroy all the data – forever.’

He showed up as a MI5 agent for those suspects who had not been arrested, urging their families to see that they fled, as if they were terrorists too.

Went off then as a Mi6 agent to Tehran where he looked for resdents who would work for the UK.

Quite possible that Gould arranged for two Iranians with stolen Austrian passports to not only sabotage Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco but then managed miraculously to crash the yet to be found MH370.

This farcical unwanted Election must surely have shown everyone a key fact – we now live in a country where the supposed natural party of government can no longer really command a majority.

That’s like having a fridge that doesn’t keep your food fresh, or a bicycle with no wheels. If we had any sense (do we?) we’d dump this dead, rotting faction in the nearest skip or landfill, and find a new one to replace it. The Tories failed on Thursday because they have long believed in nothing and are interested only in being in office.

They won in 2015 only because of a grotesque splurge of millionaire donations, and ultra-expensive black magic techniques, which partly made up for the collapse of their once-majestic membership and the machine it supported.

They are, in effect, a zombie party, lurching and shuffling along in a procession of the undead, thanks to transfusions of money and the BBC’s ancient broadcasting rules, which guarantee them air time.

Peter Hitchin is often a good read, let down by his conclusions. He wants a genuine conservative party to succeed and can’t understand why anyone votes for the (non) Conservative Party, but rejects the voting reform needed to facilitate a genuine conservative party as anti-conservative!

The reason people vote for the Conservative Party is because they consider themselves conservative and then project that onto the Conservative Party, but what constitutes conservative can change over time and the secret of Conservative Party success is it adopts itself to change and vote wise did very well in the election.

I wondered why people voted Tory, thanks. I thought it was mainly self-interest, modulated by media and business interests pretending to have an altruistic concern for society and offering absolution from guilt. What is pathetically evident in the current Tory government is that it has not adapted to change, and has no intention of doing so. Unless you mean relentless and continuing change in the application of propaganda, and something of a relaxation in that inconvenient old quality of truthfulness. If the Tories had had the remotest awareness of and intention to adapt to economic and social change, it would have skewered both Corbyn and Blair, to say nothing of the LibDems, by moving leftwards, not further in the direction indicated by its rooted, traditional, prejudices.

I don’t think many people who vote conservative think the way you describe and self-interest applies to all the other parties too. But the point is the election delivered an overwhelming vote for the main right and left parties and I don’t see how either can really improve on their vote. Indeed any further change only depends on a handful of votes changing sides or not voting in a small number of seats.

But many conservatives do believe their own propaganda that austerity is needed because “the money’s run out”, a view shared until recently by Labour. Now I don’t dispute that some promote this fiction as a cover for privatisation, but the truth is austerity was EU austerity to save the Euro. Now following Brexit there is a “money tree” because as there is now no prospect of joining the Euro the books can be balanced over a longer period making a big increase in public spending possible. Hammond recognised this when he tore up Osborne’s fiscal plans, but still foolishly continued the language of cuts which they thought sounded more financially responsible. But the Corbyn Left know the truth and have announced support for Brexit as part of their anti-austerity agenda, with O’Donnell now supporting leaving the single market.

I don’t dispute that some (Tories -BZ) promote this fiction as a cover for privatisation,
The only ones who mattered did, and still do.

the truth is austerity was EU austerity to save the Euro.
That was a local concern. The general cause was the implosion of a corrupt financial system across the West, and the need to create debt to fill the vacuum. The assumption was that austerity would stimulate growth by replacing government expenditure with profitable activities. It hasn’t done yet. After a decade, unsecured debt is ballooning, savings are eroded, stock markets are far into bubble country. Another crash is just round the corner, and the touted solution will be that the least able to stand it will feel the pain, as usual. The assumption is wrong. So, btw, is the concept of a society dominated by unlimited economic growth, which, when boom gives way to bust, reveals itself as inflation and devaluation.

And there’s always been a money tree. Suckers will even accept negative interest on government bonds, and do.

Yes and yet Labour supported austerity too. That means they either supported privatisation, or they supported austerity to save the Euro due to wanting to join when politically possible to do so. The evidence for the latter is the extensive promotion of PFI, mickey-mouse accounting.

And it was Labour extensive deregulation of the banks, as part of the so-called independence of Bank of England that led to the crash (American malpractice operated from London) and claiming austerity was the solution to the crash was the cover story for propping up the Euro.

My feelings on the Blairite takeover of Labour during the period in question are well known here. Blair shifted Labouir well to the right of the one-nation Tories during his time, and anything unpleasant I have to say about Tories applies unequivocally to him and his ilk. Nul points.

Discussing the campaigns is a bit misleading as it assumes that the campaigns by the party’s, or at least their official campaigns, made the difference. Even the social care debacle didn’t really hit the conservative vote going by their share of the vote. The big difference was the secret services campaign to demonise Corbyn which clearly back fired by mobilising the non-Tory and anti-establishment vote in his favour, which he simply countered by saying make peace not war. I.e. the Trump effect.

Jo trust me, as a previous Green party member on their regional council it was impossible to get a decent fair worded transcript the BBC would adhere to, from their political editors. They excluded them for decades for various reasons they made up as they went along.
The day of the local elections finished the Green party had won 40 seats in a highly contested election that saw a wipe out of UKIP cllr’s. The BBC led with their demise all day long, they promoted the Tory’s then as they do now.

That it was the Tory’s who followed the straw man Farrage and got all scary about his demands, that they granted a referendum to take the wind out of his sails. on followed political innuendo and lies upon lies, amplified by a Tory media that wanted out.
Their failure is long term, when they should have been at the centre of decision making, they took the massive trade profits, sat on the fence and worked the system for all it was worth. Now they are screaming that its undemocratic after having done zilch to change it.

The Greens in Europe wanted change from day one. They did not agree that the top decision makers were unelected and unaccountable, but they did not swing handbags but tried their best to unite with others to change it, thanks to no one.
The BBC is a self perpetuating hydra that is directed to serve their dependency on the party in power on the day. If JC would have won they would not have known what to say, or how to be nice to him. Break them up, they are no different than the EU.

That didn’t even apply to the print news, as I am reminded of what I wrote negatively about what foreign correspondent Cy Sulesburger (sp?_had written in the NYT about something regarding LBH’s Vietnam War.. It would finally publish it if I agreed to his changes which i didn’t.

The American public was so brain washed by Washington even then that even the Soviets were asking questions about how to do it.

And where do we as a nation figure in all this? Scotland dissolving the Anglo-Scottish Union and thereby ending the UK as a legal entity is the massive elephant in the British swimming pool. The system has been running scared of our departure for decades. Every time there is a ‘nationalist flair-up’ the prophets warn of things going down the pan for the establishment of which broadcasting is an essential part.
Frankly I dont care what happens to rump Ukania or indeed what the state broadcasters say, my only concern is that my country gets out of this masochistic relationship with a country whose interests plainly diverge from our own.
We can punch well above our weight on this one. Why do those running the show require that we pull our punches. Marr, Neill, Gove, Fox et al can go to hell in their unionist made handcart. Want a push guys?

The formula for ending the conflict was to bring in the armed groups (but specifically IRA) into the peace process as the way to disarm them! Distasteful, but it worked and as a result DUP become Ulster Unionist and SF became SDLP. And as constitutional nationalists the SDLP attended Westminster and logically SF should now do the same, as part of the peace process. Personally I welcome it, just as I welcome SNP going native at Westminster, because it brings an Independent United Ireland within a United Britain Union closer outside the EU.

Will the protestant paramilitaries now disarm or are they preparing for another NI confrontation with those who are disarmed.
The DUP wants the marching ban lifted, that sounds like the beginning of trouble for NI/European Citizens, something that will not be silently accepted by those in charge of Europe. For the Tories to go native and try to bust the Good Friday Agreement might be another stumbling block that is not acceptable. Every move by them points to one direction, favours for the DUP, when an impartial UK Government has been ratified.

The more Mrs. May delays her Government and the talks, which she triggered in mid stream without a paddle, the more time to talk will be wasted and they will have nothing to show for their contortions and uncertainty. Creating a new sectarian divide will create violence, marching will do the same, and a hard Brexit, which should n now be a thing of the past, will guarantee a hard border in Ireland, something nobody wants in NI.

Are you a member of the NEC Dave, because otherwise you’re talking fiction here.
NOBODY does know anything as to what will happen now. All wee understand is that the DUP and their demands will ensure that their views are more important than that of the UK’s public representatives.
Unless we have a team that includes the views of the 48%, not the 17 million who failed to vote and have no voice whatsoever, or the EU citizens who were excluded from deciding their future in Europe, this tin pot coalition of the desperate, will NOT REPRESENT THE UK.

Why no discussion of Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein’s role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey. and straugthening out the DoJ when he and then FBI Diretot Robert Meuller and their underlings and associates looked the other way when NSA’s Special Collection Service agents apparently assassinated leaker John P. Wheeler, III, and ali-Resa Pahlavi, heir to the Iranian throne, to suit the covert leaders of the Democrat government?

You may have seen Tommy’s Comments by now, Maybe not, and Craig may possibly have a wee bit of inside info..Anyhoo –

Mr Sheppard, who was elected to the House of Commons in 2015, said while there is “widespread support” for many of his ideas, he does not have “majority support for becoming leader” from his colleagues at Westminster.
He said the SNP must work to win back previous supporters who voted Labour in the election as a result of the “Corbyn surge”.
With a second election possible in the coming months after the Conservatives lost their parliamentary majority, Mr Sheppard said: “We need to win these voters back and we might not have long to do it.
“In my view this means our priority should be to focus on our left flank and take the battle to Labour in Scotland.
“It is clear to me that whilst there seems widespread support for many of the ideas I am arguing, I do not have majority support for becoming leader.
“The message is more important than the messenger and so I have decided not to contest the election for group leader.”
Mr Sheppard added: “It goes without saying that I will fully support whoever is successful in the contest.”